BAGHDAD — A little more than two weeks before Iraq’s provincial elections, there is widening anger that the published version of the election law has only a weak provision to set aside seats for women.

Early versions of the law, which governs the election of Iraq’s 18 provincial councils, included a firm guarantee that women would have at least 25 percent of the seats — the same percentage mandated by the constitution for the numbers of women in parliament.

In the male-dominated Arab culture, the framers of the constitution and the Americans who were involved in drafting it felt the quota was necessary to ensure that women would be represented.

But the provincial election law was changed several times, and the quota language was gone by the time it went to the Presidency Council, whose approval is needed for it to become official. It went back to the parliament with several unrelated changes and was published in early October.

The lack of a strong guarantee for women’s seats has only begun to gain widespread attention in the last few days.

“We’ve been told it was a mistake, but this is not good enough,” said Maysoon al-Damluji, a woman from a secular bloc in parliament. “We’re trying to be sure that women get not less than 25 percent of the seats.”

Iraq’s electoral commission is trying to come up with an interpretation of the law that would address the concerns, but it is not clear if its solution will satisfy the many political players involved.

Meanwhile, Vice President-elect Joe Biden assured Iraq’s prime minister Tuesday that the incoming administration won’t withdraw U.S. troops in a way that threatens stability, an Iraqi spokesman said.

Biden later traveled to one of the major threats to that stability — the northern city of Kirkuk. He urged rival Arabs, Kurds and Turkomen to make concessions to resolve peacefully their competing claims to the oil-rich city.

Behind closed doors, Biden said the U.S. was spending billions of dollars — some of it in Kirkuk — which could be used to help solve the global financial meltdown, according to Ribwar Faiq Talabani, a local official who attended the session.